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Saturday, November 7, 2015

Simply Saturday Fave Pins and the Week in Recap

South Texas. It goes from stinking hot and a drought of months to raging flash floods to colder than I felt in London. Crazy.

It's November!

I'd love to tell you about some awesome lessons the past week. It's getting harder and harder to convince anyone to do something. More than a couple stood me up for ideas we did have. I missed an "organizational health index" survey on Monday because of a library meeting. People are so unhappy and so stressed. I wish I knew better how to help. I'm not dealing with the frustration level very well myself.

In kinder we read I Really Like Slop! and checked out from the shelves for the first time (up to now we put books out on a table). Actually some of the calmest first shelf checkouts ever. Some years they've looked like a bomb went off when they were done. Of course the assistant was around more than he normally would be as his tutoring responsibilities were cancelled two days because of early dismissal.

(Side note ... but we can't cancel tutoring on ONE DAY for ten minutes for one grade and thirty for another for an author visit that the publisher is paying for? When last year the office allowed a choir field trip to be scheduled over an author visit that the library paid for because the school pulled the $500 they were going to contribute at the last minute?)

And with a couple first grade classes, anyway, we used Pebble Go to practice some simple reading for info and notetaking on Wild Turkeys. Due to dumb luck my part time assistant knew of a kit from our Regional Service center that was in the science lab. That foot was gross.

I did get phase two of my library transformation plan (basic gist ... what do we want to see in five years and how do we get there?) 95% done. I like to obsess and tweak over things. It felt weird even "dreaming big" again after the walls were such a surprise. Less bulky furniture, fewer tables, a LEGO wall, $ for books and tech and making. Good for the kids. Even in all the ARGH this week I looked around one morning at kids busy and thought "Yes, I wish I didn't have to get up so early and drive so far to get here. But these kids are having fun and working together and wow, that is a pretty good way to start the day."

One day I spent a good amount of time messing around with the 3D printer. I now feel I have a ... basic knowledge. Petrified to try teaching kids how to do it, yes. I'm hoping that they catch on faster than I did because of experience in Minecraft. Kind of makes me feel seasick.

Click through for original sources. Amazed you made it this far down the post!
Genius.

Possible bit of spoiler here. And just for the record she is doing quite well on her own. Though having a brother around is always a good thing.

I should add this to the half done electronic resources board in the library. It's really hard to get stuff like that done when people need things every few minutes. Which is what we do, right? Postpone "our" agendas for the needs of the patrons?

I ordered a couple Google Cardboard kits but I'm now thinking our iTouches are too old to even work.

On a total side note ... the TPT conference is in Orlando. it's actually tempting because Harry Potter would be SO CLOSE! Not that I ever plan on that part of my online world becoming huge. But some social media knowhow and digital design tips could also spill over into other parts of my life. So when I saw that email it sounded kind of fun there for a sec.

I guess at some point if I'm going to rant I should point out I blog as ME and not as a representative of my school or district.